MSI Motherboards at CES 2014: Kaveri and Socketed Kabini

Wrapping up our visit with MSI, we’ve already seen many of their already-launched motherboards (e.g. series 8 chipsets), but MSI did have some upcoming Kaveri motherboards on display with varying features and sizes. There’s not much to say about specs at present, but perhaps the more interesting boards (that we can actually discuss) are the two mini-ITX offerings. The first is a Kaveri platform, which is expected, but the second is the first instance of socketed Kabini motherboard that we’ve seen. The Kabini board recycles FS1, and it’s fun to see the difference in pin counts between the upcoming Kaveri socket and FS1b. It’s not entirely clear what the market is for the socketed Kabini chips, but presumably it’s an easier way for manufacturers to offer multiple performance options with mini-ITX Kabini systems.